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INCORPORATION-BY-REFERENCE OF MATERIAL SUBMITTED ON A COMPACT DISC (See 37 CFR 1.52(e)(5) and MPEP 608.05. Computer program listings (37 CFR 1.96(c)), xe2x80x9cSequence Listingsxe2x80x9d (37 CFR 1.821(c)), and tables having more than 50 pages of text are permitted to be submitted on compact discs.) or REFERENCE TO A xe2x80x9cMICROFICHE APPENDIXxe2x80x9d (See MPEP xc2xa7608.05(a). xe2x80x9cMicrofiche Appendicesxe2x80x9d were accepted by the Office until Mar. 1, 2001.)
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(1) Field of the Invention
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The present invention relates to a motorized swiveling device according to the preamble of the main claim.
A swiveling device of this species is known from European Patent Application 0 316 055 A1 in the form of a housing to receive one reversible small electric motor each for the coordinated drive of each of two tappet-like linear actuators, onto whose front ends a mirror support plate is linked and which may be extended out of the housing and/or withdrawn therein opposite to one another. In this way, they tilt the support plate around an axis centrally transverse to the connection line between the two linear actuators. The transmission of movement from the motor to the threaded rod assigned thereto is performed in each case using a pinion on the motor shaft, which rotates a threaded bushing, axially fixed on housing, via external teeth and thus linearly displaces the threaded rod, whose external thread is engaged with the internal thread of the bushing.
(1) Description of Related Art including information disclosed under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98.
The requirement of having to simultaneously use two motorized drives acting oppositely coordinated for this simple pivot movement of a mirror support plate around a pivot axis is, however, very costly. In addition, the operational reliability is impaired due to the danger of not exactly synchronized operation; if the two linear actuators are not moved exactly opposite by their motors, then a reproducible swiveling movement of the support plate around a predetermined fixed geometric axis does not occur, but rather this pivot axis experiences a lateral displacement.
Moving a pendulum arm in pivoting movement via an eccentric linkage to convert a rotational movement into a rapid and high-capacity oscillation, for example, for driving reciprocating saws, pump plungers, or hay balers has been known per se from U.S. Pat. No. 1,147,896 for a long time. Ideas for a reproducible, mechanically stable adjustment of the slant of a mirror using an electric motor have obviously not been derived in the professional world from this old publication.
Providing a rotating disk cam having crown gear teeth and a motor shaft pinion, which engages therein with radial orientation to the cam, for a driven, periodical sequential control of multiple valves for water management in a household washing machine has also been known for long time, from U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,809. The cam is equipped with two concentric peripheral stepped grooves having internal teeth, in which the actuating shafts of the stationary valves engage, which are equipped with gear wheels of different diameters and therefore correspondingly engage to different depths in the grooves, in order to be opened and closed again periodically but at different speeds as a function thereof during rotation of the disk cam. However, automobile mirrors may not be adjusted using such rotational sequences of valve shafts.
In consideration of the shortcoming described above, the present invention is based on the technical object of designing a swiveling device according to the species so it is more functionally robust and, nonetheless, more cost-effective due to lower outlay for individual parts.
This object is achieved according to the present invention in that, according to the features essentially indicated in the main claim, for the motorized pivot movement, the two threaded rods assigned to a pivot axis are driven by a rotational link both to one another and to a shared motor. For this purpose, there is a gear, which is positively linked via its teeth to each of the two threaded bushings for the threaded rods to drive them, lying approximately parallel to the mirror plate in the flat housing, which both threaded rods, which are mounted so they rotate together, are moved into and/or out of in their longitudinal directions, transverse to the main plane of the housing. The bushings are rotatably mounted parallel to the rotational axis of the gear and diametrically opposed to one another axially on the gear and fixed to the housing. The electric reversible servomotor shared by the two threaded rods of one pivot axis preferably has its axis in the plane of the gear and engages, for example, with a worm gear, with which the motor shaft is equipped, in external (radial or crown) teeth of the gear. These are preferably the same teeth which mesh with the external teeth of both threaded bushings.
A similar pair of threaded rods, jointly driven by a further such reversing motor via its gear and its bushings, may be positioned aligned parallel to the first described but transverse thereto. In case of another positively driven rotational link, its threaded bushings therefore mesh with a separate gear wheel drivable by motor, which has a somewhat smaller diameter and is mounted on or under the first gear described, in order to be able to perform the pivot movement of the plate in an axis orthogonal to the first axis described as wellxe2x80x94and therefore, due to their superposition, in any arbitrary spatial direction. With this supplementation, according to the present invention, in a pivot device operating without jamming, the support plate of a truck external mirror adjustable using a motor is mounted in an articulated way on four threaded rods which may be moved different distances out of the housing, which are moved opposite to one another in pairs via a (gear)wheel by a reversible drive motor assigned to the gear.
For a more detailed explanation of the present invention and its alterations and refinements, reference is made to the sub-claims and to the following description of a preferred exemplary embodiment of the achievement of the object according to the present invention, which is illustrated in the drawing approximately to scale but abstracted to the elements essential for its function.